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“Oh! It’s Shelby. Yes, I remember this girl. Shelby . . . I don’t know if I knew her last name. She was in residence with me. A year or so younger, I think, but years tougher. She scored me zoner. Sorry, Gamma,” she added with a glance toward her grandmother.
“It was long ago.”
“The first few weeks I was there, I was really only looking for a place to sleep. I didn’t have any intention of getting clean, or changing my attitude, just paid lip service to all that.”
“You were so angry,” her grandmother added.
“Oh, I was pissed at everyone and everything.” She gave a soft, almost wondering laugh, kissed Tiffany’s cheek. “Especially you because you just wouldn’t give up on me.”
“Never.”
“So I went to the sessions, did the assignments—because I got a bed and food out of it. I figured they—the Joneses—were suckers, and I snuck illegals, alcohol, whatever I could when I wanted. But it wasn’t as easy as I’d assumed, because they weren’t suckers. I traded a beaded bracelet I had for the zoner. Everybody knew Shelby could get whatever you wanted, smuggle it in, if you gave her something she liked, and a little time.”
Seraphim paused when the droid brought in the coffee, and left just as quietly as she’d come.
“The staff didn’t know?” Eve asked Seraphim.
“She was very clever. No, canny’s a better word. Shelby was very canny. She got caught for minor things a time or two—and looking back, looking back not only as an adult but as a therapist, she very likely let herself get caught. Minor things were expected, and the punishments easy to get through. We outnumbered the staff probably ten to one easily back then. They were doing what they could to keep us safe, off the streets, out of sex trades, to help us. But to us, a lot of us? They were just marks.”
“What about a carpenter’s helper? Jon Clipperton.”
“I don’t remember his name, and may not have known it, but I remember the man Brodie brought with him a few times, in those last weeks we were in that building. Some men look at you,” she said to Eve, “and you know they’re seeing you naked. Sometimes that’s okay, you’re seeing them naked, too. And other times it’s insulting. Or it’s worse. I was young, but I’d been on the street awhile. I knew the way he looked at me and some of the other girls. And it wasn’t okay.”
“Did he do more than look?”
“I don’t know. I think he got some beer to Shelby, but she never said. We weren’t tight. I was, to her, an occasional customer. How did they die?”
“I can’t answer that yet. Did you ever go back inside that building after you’d changed locations?”
“No. I never wanted to go back there. I changed, before the move. Things changed for me, a transition. The talk therapy I paid lip service to so I’d get that bed, food, it began to get through, even though I resisted. Philadelphia worked with me one-on-one—whether I wanted her to or not and despite the blocks I put up, she began to get through the anger and self-hatred. She finally convinced me to speak to Gamma—my grandmother.”
“And you donated a building, and funds to the Joneses.”
“I did,” Mrs. Bittmore confirmed. “I can’t say they saved Seraphim’s life, but they helped her come home, they helped her discover who she really was.”
Tiffany patted Seraphim’s knee as she sipped her coffee. “They were doing their work in an inadequate space in a subpar building, and couldn’t afford the loan on that building much less proper maintenance, repair, the right staff. They’d given Seraphim a chance. I gave them one.”
“Ms. Brigham, you said Clipperton gave you a bad feeling. Was there anyone else who gave you that kind of feeling, or made you uneasy?”
“Some of the boys who came and went. You’d learn who to avoid. Lieutenant, we were a house of addicts and emotionally damaged children. Some of us, as I was for a time, were just looking for a free ride and a way to score. If the staff found illegals, alcohol, or weapons, they we
re confiscated. No one was ever asked to leave, not while I was in residence. That was the point. It was a sanctuary, and the risk of that is giving safe harbor to those who want trouble. But the benefits outweigh that risk. They saved me, or put me on a path where I could save myself. I’m far from the only one.”
“Does anyone stick out? Anyone you can think of who had reason to cause Shelby harm?”
“She scared the hell out of me, and a lot of others,” Seraphim said with a hint of a smile. “I thought I could handle myself. The arrogance of youth, the few months I’d spent on the street, most of that high. But even at my worst, I wouldn’t have taken her on. She had enemies, no question, but they tended to give her a wide berth. She could fight. I saw her take down another girl who probably had twenty pounds on her, and wasn’t a wilter. But Shelby was just fierce.”
She paused a moment. “My anger,” she said slowly, “I see now, again as an adult, as a therapist, paled beside hers.”
“Who did she hang with?”
“Ah . . . there were a couple of girls, and a boy. Let me think.” As she sipped coffee, Seraphim rubbed at her temple as if to stir up the memory. “DeLonna—skinny black girl,” Seraphim continued, closing her eyes. “She could sing. Yes, yes, I remember her. She had an incredible voice, a true gift. And another girl who was Missy or Mikki. I think Mikki. A bit plump, hard eyes. And a boy everybody called T-Bone. Smart, a little spooky. He’d just drift around like smoke. He’d steal your molars and you wouldn’t know it. Old burn marks on his arms—he covered some with tats, but you could see, and a scar down his cheek.
“They weren’t always together, but they hung together more than not, and more than any of them did with anyone else.”
“Did anyone on the staff have trouble with Shelby, or these others? Did anyone threaten them to your knowledge?”
“They were in trouble often, and I’d say, with Shelby in particular, it was a constant battleground with the staff. It’s frustrating and difficult work, Lieutenant, full of conflict and struggle. And incredibly rewarding. I would imagine you often feel the same about yours.”
